JACK KILBORN ~ AFRAID (31 page)

“I think we got all the bleeders. Find the vial marked
potassium,
Fran, and fill another syringe. That will help clot his blood. Duncan, go to where you found the water and bring me a white plastic bottle of rubbing alcohol.”

While Fran located the vial, Warren dabbed the wound with gauze pads, saturating one after another.

“Good, Duncan. Pour the whole bottle on his leg.”

“Mom uses this when I get cuts,” Duncan said. “It’s going to hurt.”

“It would hurt more if he got an infection and died. That’s why your mom uses it on you. Now let it flow, son.”

Duncan was right. When the liquid hit Streng’s leg his eyes popped open and he jackknifed into a sitting position, letting out a cry that made all three of them flinch. Warren gently pushed him back down and applied more gauze. Fran jabbed the second syringe into his leg and depressed the plunger.

“Duncan, give that transfuse a few more pumps. Frannie, squirt one of those tubes of antibiotic ointment on the stump, and then we can close him up.”

Fran reached for the ointment, then stopped herself.

“Don’t call me Frannie,” she said.

Warren waited.

“Mom called me Frannie, when I was growing up. You weren’t there. You aren’t allowed to call me that.”

“Okay.
Fran
, can you put on the ointment?”

Fran squeezed the contents onto Streng’s leg, and then Warren stitched a flap of skin closed over the stump, leaving the clamps sticking out. Then he packed on gauze and bandages. She watched him work, weaving the tape through the clamps, moving quickly but efficiently. When he finished he wiped his hands on his jeans and stood up.

“Can you pass me one of those plastic IV bags? The one that says
saline
on it?”

Fran fished around for the bag, while Warren pinched the needle out of his arm. When she located it, he attached the tube to the inlet valve and placed it on a shelf above Streng.

Warren cleared his throat. “There’s a bathroom around the corner and a kitchen with a laundry room. Both have sinks if you two want to get cleaned up. There are some extra shirts hanging next to the washing machine.”

Fran looked at her hands, her clothes, and found herself completely saturated with blood.

“I need you both back here pronto. We need to plan for when they get in.”

“How can they find us?” Duncan asked. “We’re hidden.”

“They’ll find us. They won’t stop until they do.”

“Why?”

“Because I have something they want.”

“What?”

Warren didn’t answer.

“It would be nice to know,” Fran said, rage bubbling up to the surface, “why these people have been trying to kill us, and why my husband had to die.”

Warren let out a slow breath.

“Tell me,” she ordered.

“No.”

“You owe me that.”

“I don’t owe anyone a goddamn thing.”

“Then why the hell did you let us in? If you don’t care about anything, why didn’t you just let us die?”

Warren stared at her for a moment and seemed to come to a decision.

“I was reckless when I was younger. Got into a lot of trouble. Raised some hell. I met your mother right before I shipped off to Vietnam. I’m sure she was a wonderful lady, but the truth is I’d only spent a few hours total with her, so I didn’t know her too well.”

“Stick to the story.”

“They say war changes people. It didn’t change me. I kept on doing what I always did. I sold drugs, supplies, stolen goods. I smuggled people, too. I had the connections. Wound up being in charge of the black market for the Kontum Province.”

Warren coughed. He bent down and grabbed the water jug, taking a long sip before he continued.

“Anything of value went through me. Not just contraband. Information, too. I passed the important stuff on to the higher-ups—I was a criminal, not a traitor. But near the end of my tour I got something unique. Something I couldn’t give to the higher-ups.”

Warren went to a shelf, opened an old shoe box. He reached inside and removed a blue plastic disk, big as a donut but less than an inch thick.

“A local came to me with this. An eight-millimeter film. Said he found it in a movie camera, near a South Vietnamese village that the enemy had bombed. Told me it was worth a lot. I watched it, realized what it was, and paid him. I was already rich, but this would make me more money than I could ever use.”

“So this is all about a stupid roll of film?” Fran couldn’t get her mind around it. “What’s on it?”

“You don’t want to know. It’s bad. Real bad.”

“Tell me.”

“No.”

Fran folded her arms. “Why not?”

“It will put you and Duncan in danger.”

She snorted. “How could we be in any more danger?”

“You could. Trust me.”

Fran tried a different tactic. “So why didn’t you sell it?”

“I tried. After the war ended, I shipped my stuff back here. Contacted the potential buyer. I was going to buy a big mansion in Beverly Hills.” Wiley shook his head. “I was a fool. Instead of millions, he sent some men over. I wouldn’t tell them where I hid the film. They tried to make me talk. They tried hard. I got lucky, managed to get away. I knew they’d come after me again, so I disappeared.”

“If they’re after the film, let’s give it to them,” Fran said. “Then they’ll leave us alone.”

Warren shook his head. “They won’t leave us alone. They’ll kill us whether they get the film or not.”

“How do you know?”

Warren met her gaze. “Because that’s what I’d do.”

Fran snatched the roll from him. She was tempted to throw it against the wall, as if destroying it would make all of this horror disappear. She raised it over her head, waited for Warren’s reaction.

He did nothing.

“Don’t you care if I destroy it?” Fran asked.

“No. I stopped caring about things a long time ago.”

“But isn’t it the reason you live like this?” Fran swept her hand across the room. “Underground, surrounded by traps?”

“I live like this,” Warren said in calm, even tones, “because this is what I deserve.”

Fran hadn’t expected that answer. She asked again, “What’s on this film, Warren?”

“We need to get cleaned up.” Warren headed for the door. “They’ll find us soon.”

“I want to see it.”

“No.”

Fran drilled her eyes into him.

“Show me the film. You can’t just tell me half the story.”

“Are you sure? If you watch it, you can’t unwatch it. I know.”

“Show me.”

“You don’t want to see it. Believe me.”

She thrust the film into his chest. “Show me, goddammit.”

Warren’s face seemed to sag.

Then he said, “Okay.”

T
he projector looked like a small oval suitcase with a metal snap on top. Wiley lifted it by the handle and set it on the hallway floor, then took off the left side of the shell, exposing the inner workings. He plugged it into the wall outlet. Then he opened up the round blue container and removed the film. Seeing it again made Wiley’s stomach clench.

“Duncan, why don’t you go wash up in the kitchen and get a snack,” he said.

“I want to stay here with you and Mom, Grandpa.”

“Go on, Duncan,” Fran said. “This one is adults only.”

Duncan sighed, then plodded down the hall and through the kitchen door.

“I’ve only seen this three times.” Wiley spoke while threading the film through the projector’s sprockets. “The first time, back in Vietnam. Then twenty years ago, when I bought a video camera and transferred it to VHS. The last time was just a few months ago, when I made a digital copy on my computer.”

“Why don’t we watch it on one of those other formats?”

“Because both of those have large screens. This way, I can make the image small.”

Wiley frowned. Even small, it still hit like a sucker punch. But at least you didn’t see as much detail.

“Can you flick the wall switch?”

Fran pressed it, and the overhead fluorescents winked out. Wiley turned the knob to run and aimed the square of light at a blank spot on the wall. The image was half the size of a sheet of paper.

They watched.

The first shot was inside a helicopter, obviously in flight. The camera jerked and jolted, making a blurry pan across the faces of five men sitting in the bay. They all wore black uniforms, their expressions no-nonsense.

“Does this have sound?” Fran asked above the clackety-clack of the projector.

“It’s silent.”

“Who are these men?”

“A secret military unit. They aren’t wearing any insignia, but you can tell they’re U.S. by their boots and weapons. Plus it’s one of our choppers. And see there?”

Wiley pointed to a sixth man, standing by the door, looking smug.

“He’s got major’s stripes. These are our boys, no doubt.”

The film cut to the helicopter after it landed, the cameraman following the six others out of the bay and onto the ground. They were in a village, a poor one, surrounded by jungle. A handful of ramshackle buildings stood alongside a dirt road. Clothing hung on drying lines. Livestock roamed freely.

There were people in the village. Vietnamese peasants. They looked at the approaching unit with curiosity, some of them openly smiling. None of them ran away.

You should have,
Wiley thought.

Another cut, and the villagers were being rounded up, gathered in the middle of the town. Over fifty in total.

Then the soldiers raised their M16s.

Wiley winced, knowing what was coming.

Villagers panicked but couldn’t escape their fate. The men in the black uniforms opened fire. The people began to drop.

“Notice they aren’t shooting to kill,” Wiley said. “They’re aiming for legs, so they can’t run away.”

When the whole town was on the ground, screaming, panicking, bleeding, the soldiers set down their guns and drew their knives.

The first peasant died by having his belly slit open. The cameraman got a close-up of his insides being yanked out.

“Oh, Jesus,” Fran said.

It got worse. Much worse. Throats were slit. Eyes gouged out. Limbs hacked off. Scalpings. Beheadings. Castrations. Skinnings. When the pregnant woman came onscreen, Wiley had to look away.

The cameraman had a hard time keeping up. He sometimes got in close to see detail work, other times pulled away to catch multiple atrocities happening at once.

Wiley glanced at Fran. She had her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide with horror. He looked back at the flickering image.

They were at the scene where the soldiers began to undress.

“Can I turn it off now?” Wiley asked.

Fran nodded. He reached for the knob and stopped the evil, grateful for the reprieve.

Darkness and silence filled the hallway.

“What happens next?” Fran whispered.

“The soldiers rape many of the people who are still alive. And some who aren’t. They don’t discriminate with age, sex, or orifice. Sometimes they even make new orifices. Based on the position of the sun in the shots, it went on for at least four or five hours. Then they kill the few who are still alive, dismember the bodies, put everything in a big pile, and set it on fire.”

“And then?”

Wiley took a deep breath, let it out through his clenched teeth.

“Then it gets kind of confusing. There’s a quick shot of them setting up charges, and then it jumps to a big explosion, and the camera spins away and dies out. I think the cameraman got too close before it blew, and he died. That’s how they lost the camera. But before that happens, it reveals the name of the village, on a sign. It was in South Vietnam.”

Fran turned on the lights. Wiley squinted against the sudden glare.

“South Vietnam?” she said. “We were fighting to liberate South Vietnam. They were our allies.”

“That’s why no one ran away when the chopper landed. They probably thought we were there to help them.”

Fran was silent for several seconds. Then she spoke a single word.

“Why?”

“When I saw the film the first time, I recognized the major. He was the man I went to after the war ended. I asked him the same thing.”

“What did he say?”

“He said the military was creating a new type of soldier. But before they went into the field, they needed to be tested. They picked a town that wouldn’t see it coming, wouldn’t fight back.”

Wiley turned the knob to reverse the film, keeping the bulb off. They both watched it slowly rewind.

“You went to the major to get money from him.”

Wiley didn’t answer. But he managed a slight nod.

“That unit,” Fran said. “Did it have a name?”

“The major called them a Red-ops unit.”

Fran stood. “Those fuckers outside. They’re a Red-ops unit, too.”

“I figured as much.”

“Why didn’t you expose this? Why didn’t you go to the press?”

Wiley had thought about that many, many times. He didn’t go at first because he wanted the money he thought he could extort from the major. But instead of paying, the major had sent two of his Red-ops team to visit Wiley, to get him to reveal the location of the film.

They worked on him for less than an hour. But they’d inflicted enough pain in that hour to last a lifetime. Nothing permanent had been done to him. Just squeezing. Hitting. Pulling. Breaking.

Wiley would have talked within the first few minutes, but the film was at his parents’ house, shipped back from Vietnam with the rest of his war booty. As selfish as he’d been in the past, as reckless and unconcerned for their feelings, he wasn’t going to let these animals get their hands on his parents. Even if it meant dying in agony.

He got lucky. The Red-ops soldiers the major had sent were geniuses at torture but pretty stupid otherwise. They talked slow. Repeated themselves a lot. Wiley convinced them the film was under his bed, and they believed him. When they couldn’t find it, they brought Wiley over. He reached into the hidden slit in his mattress, grabbed the gun he kept there, and killed them both. Then he hurried to his parents’ house, grabbed all of his stuff, and fled.

That had been the last time he ever saw them.

He could have gone to the press after that. But he was terrified that they’d find him. And they’d hurt him, and his mom, and dad, and brother. So he drifted around for a few years, coming back to Safe Haven after his folks had died, building this bunker where he separated himself from the world.